Engineers in a Developing Country

The Profession and Education of Engineering Professionals in South Africa

Economic growth in South Africa depends on engineering capacity to provide state-of-the-art, safe infrastructure for service delivery. At the same time the new democracy needs to address transformation. This monograph explores current capacity to address these challenges.

The study provides a demographic analysis of employment trends across the public and private sectors of the economy, and investigates the demand for engineers, technologists and technicians in the workforce. A comprehensive analysis of the educational context for engineering professionals focuses on enrolment, graduation and throughput trends in all engineering disciplines at universities and universities of technology, and reveals that although there have been positive innovations in education and training strategies in recent years, many issues, especially at secondary school level, remain a challenge.

Women in engineering is a particular focus of this study, which devotes a chapter to examining the factors that influence their choice of career, the barriers they experience in the labour market and strategies for encouraging women into the profession.

This comprehensive monograph offers valuable quantitative and qualitative information about engineering capacity across all engineering disciplines in South Africa. It is therefore an important reference for all engineering academics as well as decision-makers in both the private and public sectors, and will be useful to aspiring and current engineering students, whatever their field.

This study forms part of a broader project on professions and professional education within the HSRC Research Programme on Education, Science and Skills Development (ESSD).The research focus of ESSD is wide, spanning three major social domains: the education system, the national system of innovation, and the world of work. The programme is distinctive in that it is able to conduct research at the interface of these domains, to produce comprehensive, integrated and holistic analyses of the pathways of learners through schooling, further and higher education into the labour market and the national system of innovation.

Dr Rnette du Toit holds a DLitt et Phil (Psychology) from the University of Johannesburg. She has extensive research experience in human resources and skills development in the labour market. Dr du Toit is also a member of the International Technology, Education and Development (INTED) 2008-2009 Scientific Advisory Board.

Joan Roodt is a chief researcher in the Education, Science and Skills Development research programme at the HSRC and is a member of the International Technology, Education and Development (INTED) 2008-2009 Scientific Advisory Board.

Learning to Teach in South Africa is a collection of key texts by one of South Africas most respected thinkers in education. The essays span the crucial years of democratic transition in South Africa and display the essential unity of the authors thought as he reflects on the idea of epistemological access, a prominent feature of disciplined thinking about education in South Africa, as well as teacher education, the primacy of the practice of teaching in any system of education, and the continuing struggle with relativism, one of the strands of the Apartheid and colonialism legacies. The collection bears the authors hallmark intellectual passion and incisive thinking which has helped sculpt the landscape of educational debates over three decades.

All countries, and South Africa is no exception, face acute dilemmas in modernising their systems of upper secondary and further education and training. Faced with pressures from the fast changing world of work, this education sector has become characterized by political slogans stressing skill development, improved access and participation, and the accountability of providers through some form of market. On the other hand, the phenomenon of academic drift reveals that students increasingly see their future as progressing to higher education. Policymakers attempt to resolve these competing demands by calling for transferable, portable outcomes and qualifications as the new currency of an increasingly market-type system.

Drawing on nearly a decade of the South African Association for Research in Mathematics Science and Technology Education (SAARMSTE) conferences, this book captures the broad range of research being done in mathematics education in South Africa. The volume also provides an historical analysis of forces that have shaped mathematics curricula.